We Explore What It Means To Live In The Gray At Our SXSW Dinner

It's unavoidable: When we work in media, we live, breathe, and carry our day with us wherever we go. The advent of the connected web, social-media outlets, and email on every device means that our jobs become our lives — but fortunately for those who are passionate about what we do, our lives are also our jobs.

NYC-based Live In The Grey was founded upon the idea that there are no more clear divisions in our lives between work and play, on or off — a fact we know all too well at R29. When working in a creative environment, coworkers and friends have no division, ideas and hobbies begin to meld, and a social excursion might give way to one of the most important professional contacts you may ever make. This nebulous space, the philosophy goes, is called "living in the gray."

In the spirit of combining ideas with action and friends with colleagues, we teamed up with LITG in Austin to host a salon-style dinner at Uchiko in Austin, picking some of our favorite notables in areas like music, fashion, PR, tech, and design (think: Tom Windish of The Windish Agency, Allison Brown at Vogue, or musician Reggie Watts) to have a non-work-but-still-professional dinner during SXSW. And what we've discovered is that not only are those we most look up to in a work setting some pretty interesting people, but they make great friends, too.